


Death in the Summer of Love

by LSDAndKizuki



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, Depression, John has many issues, M/M, Offstage Character Death, Suicidal ideation (implied), these aren't particularly happy tags, uh... magical mystery tour yay, unrequited love (perceived)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 21:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14923152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSDAndKizuki/pseuds/LSDAndKizuki
Summary: In which Brian ruins everything, and John continues to exist in spite of it all. Six months in nine steps.





	Death in the Summer of Love

1.

When the news comes, it is a beautiful clear night. Bangor is blanketed in a sky packed with stars, the constellations too dense to be distinguished. The milky way stretches between the two sides of the horizon, circling the Earth, a giant celestial neighbourhood. To the muffled sounds of the evening fire being lit, John rotates with his head thrown right back, drinking the sight in with a blank and sober mind. Just when the chanting reaches his ears between the cosmos, he is thinking that maybe things will be okay after all.

Then, with that usual fun-leeching way of his, that unshakeable aura of melancholic awkwardness, Brian just has to ruin it all.

“John? I have some bad news. I’m afraid…”

He comes barging in like an abominable anachronism. Jarring with the mood, with the Maharishi promising them all enlightened souls and purer lives. What place does this ugly tale have here, under these blinding stars? John thinks of him standing there in the Cavern, in a suit. Christ, a suit.

“It was an overdose. It might have – we don’t know if it was intentional or not.”

What John would give to see him in that suit now.

“I’m so sorry.”

All those hours he’d wasted, blowing his mind out, staring at the telly, staring into space – he could have _said_ something. _Thank you,_ maybe. Or _we need you. I need you._ What did he say instead? He sent flowers, once, unable to look at his crumbling face. He told him, in chicken scrawl, ‘You know I love you.’ Did he? Did he know?

There’s too much going on, inside him, at the fire, in the universe. There is a familiar chill starting in his chest; soon it will curdle through his body, stop his blood cold. John knows this game of loss. The others still do not know; does John want to tell them himself, or…?

“You tell them,” John just about rasps.

And then he’s alone, on the dewy grass, under that big eiderdown of stars. He wants it to envelop him for a moment, become something big and tangible and warm to hide him from the pain he knows is coming, and these stars are bright enough to fill his eyes’ capacity, but they are cold, and far, far away.

2.

The words make no sense. But words _themselves_ don’t make any sense, so that’s okay. John’s just exposing words for what they really are: pointless space-filler, fleeting images. Spoken dreams. Sometimes, when he speaks, he has to cough to get his voice to work, like an underused machine. His mouth has fallen shut without him realising it; he can pass hours in stillness, not meditating, sometimes not even tripping, and yet the time seems meaningless. In his youth, he knows, he could not bear silence. He thought he was still young, though.

He wrote the first words nearly a year ago, and the same sheet has sat on his piano stand, curling at the edges and yellowing in the stale air of his home. If people all got their brains together, they could do away with words altogether. Communicate with eyes and music, nothing more. So, I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

_I’m crying,_ John pencils in, on the night before they leave for Bangor. After they have returned, through his steady tears, he looks for some premonition in the words, some sense to be found in them, but they are scribbled with the same careless slant that everything else is. He’s crying. Nothing makes sense; it didn’t before, and it certainly doesn’t now.

George Martin likes things to make sense, which is why he likes Paul more than him, and it’s why when John mumbles through a barren performance of his senseless words, he just looks at him like he’s a confusing piece of modern art and says, “Well, John, what do you expect me to do with that?”

Paul says something about the chord progression. Down, down, down, like all his songs, not because he can’t be bothered to think of different cadences, but because that’s the most natural trajectory. But Paul is looking determined, and he defends the song. “Let’s do it now.” John hears, _We need to do something now, or we’ll go insane. He’ll go insane._

John can barely play the piano, but at least he can speak meaningless words. He can feel, through his shaking fingers and taut back, a nauseating mélange of alien thoughts. The loss of Brian weighs everyone down and numbs the playing, his own inability to nail the chords and Ringo’s shoddy drumming is allowing strains of frustration and resentment to slide in, somewhere in it all is Paul’s brow-beaten optimism – _I’ll keep time for you, Ringo,_ he offers, in his small soft voice, like he’s frayed at the edges but wants them all to know he can still be a bandage – and John feels sick from all of it. See, he thinks, we don’t need words at all. Better just to feel.

3.

Time passes. The day before they’re to leave for their magical mystery tour, Paul asks him of all things to get an early night. While John’s looking at him like he’s grown an extra head, he explains,

“We need to be leaving early if we’re to get any real shooting done. I don’t want you falling asleep and… and missing out on it all. So, y’know, early to bed and early to rise, okay?” There’s a tightness to Paul’s face, and there should be, because it sounds like he just told John what to do, not to put in a different chord or add a soppy ballad to the setlist, but how to _live his own fucking life,_ and Paul’s never done that before, because Paul’s always known that John doesn’t work like that, so John says before he can stop himself,

“Who died and made you king?”

And it’s like a tectonic shift under their feet. Paul rights himself in the blink of an eye, but John catches the moment his face falls. In that split second, he sees a fraction of his own despair in it. It shouldn’t give him hope, but it does.

4.

They’re having fun. But the shoot for ‘Your Mother Should Know’ goes on for far, far too long. By the time they’ve got the perfect cut, the glue sticking John’s smile to his face is really starting to lose its potency. But Paul laughs at his obvious discomfort, and that’s a laugh in itself, so they’re having fun, really. And this is all much more preferable to the alternative, anyway, which would involve letting his vocal chords rust and vaguely attempting to write something of value with the curtains drawn and the sitting room which is really John’s room getting untidier and untidier, because Cyn’s given up trying to clean it up, and Paul away from him doing God knows what, and

“Smile, John! Come on! _Let’s all get up, and dance…”_

He changes his tune. Although it’s like embracing a wasp’s nest, he casts his mind back to Bangor, not to that ghastly starry night but to the one before, when the Maharishi was giving them wisdom and they weren’t yet broken down enough to hang on to his every word.

“In every situation,” he had been saying, “There is evil. Sometimes it is intentional, sometimes not, sometimes it is random, sometimes it is necessary. But it is why we all have difficulty getting from one day to the next.”

John didn’t think that sounded particularly encouraging, but then he continued to say:

“So we must try to treat it as a fact of life. An inconvenience, rather than a mountain. And we must move our eyes away from it and think about the good.”

The wine here is good. There are some good-looking birds, too. They get nice fresh air on the magical mystery stops. Paul is good, too, and John is happy to sit back a while and let him take the reins.

They do it again. And again. And the Indian’s advice wears thin. John can’t _stand_ the too-sweet wine, or the wispy windy air at the stops because it reminds him of Wales, and the birds might be good looking but their heads are empty, or they look like they’re empty, and John cannot be bothered with any one of them. But Paul, in spite of it all, in spite of the fact that this is all _his_ doing, is still good. Because while the alternative to bad wine and bad air and bad birds is just none of those things, and John is okay with that, the alternative to Paul being Paul is no Paul at all. And John is not, never has been nor never will be even _slightly_ okay with that.

Smile.

5.

He gets Paul by himself on the night before they’re to return to the studio, or should he say, Paul gets him. Restless in his bed, he gets up in the dead of night and goes out for a little fresh air. For this leg of the tour, they’ve rented small cottages on a heath, which in their windy, English-rainy daytimes, is greying and drab. The night is cloudy, not a star in sight. John walks down the moist grass in his bare feet, sensing the ends of his pyjama bottoms growing damp and the breeze flattening his thin clothes to his body. He looks upwards and is briefly confused at how normal everything looks, before he realises he isn’t on drugs right now. He’s run out of pot, and Cyn wouldn’t let him take the acid on the bus.

He wants to blow out his mind or scream or stop breathing, any of the three will do. But there’s nothing to blow out his mind with, and he can’t wake everyone up with a scream, so

“Cold out tonight, isn’t it?”

Paul has appeared. The moonlight is not very strong, but Paul’s natural glow responds to it anyway, and the side of his cheek is silvery blue, painfully and stratospherically beautiful without any lysergic assistance needed. “Want to head to bed?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“I hear ya.” That’s Paul all right. He has an excellent ear, George Martin always says. He _hears._ Would that he would listen too, once in a while. “Reckon India’ll be much warmer. And quieter.” Paul puts a hand on John’s shoulder, grasping it gently where it meets the neck. It is through Paul’s fingers that John feels his pulse begin to slow. The scream dies inside him, melted into the lazy ooze he has grown accustomed to existing in. And then Paul murmurs, “You okay, mate?”

Socrates always answered a question with a question, presumably to hide the fact that he did not know the answer. Following the same philosophy, John replies, “Did you bring any pot?”

“Course I did. Run out already?”

“I need a fix or I’ll go insane. I hate shooting films, you know I do.”

Paul’s hand retreats a little. “Yeah, but this is different. It’s all us this time, no ponce-y directors telling us what to do.”

“All the same, can’t wait to be home.” Paul takes him by the hand to his room, but does not invite him in, instead leaving him standing in the cold for a few minutes while he rummages in his bag.

In the small moments where Paul is inside and John is outside looking at his shape, in the anticipation of a soon-to-come bliss, as if in an act of self-preservation against the dispersal of his senses, John’s mind suddenly becomes startlingly clear. And a voice like his own yet unlike it, ragged and steely, says conversationally, “It’ll be terrible, that’s what. You’ll hate it.” _What?_ John thinks in reply. “India, of course,” John sneers to John, from somewhere behind his eyes, yet in front of him.

“Got it!” Paul emerges from a black shadow with a small plastic bag. John’s heart lifts; he forgets the phantom.

6.

When Paul comes to John after the release of their terrible, embarrassing, legacy-shaming shitstain of a film, _in black and white for fucks sake what kind of idiots –_ John is terribly relieved, because Paul looks so desperately unfortunate. And in this state, he has come to John, as if he _needs_ him. John attempts to school his pleasure into more sympathetic features. It is not terribly difficult; this is his failure too, after all.

“They just didn’t understand it, right, John?” Paul says, unhappy. “They didn’t _get_ it. It’s not _supposed_ to be like every… Well, it wasn’t supposed to be…”

“Good?” John supplies, unable to help himself. “Very avant-garde.”

“You bloody supported it too,” Paul says, too weary and disappointed for his words to have any bite. “You’re not just going to pin this all on me, are you?”

John says, “Shall I get some egg nog to make you feel better?”

Paul wrinkles his nose. “Americans drink that stuff. Where’s the missus?”

“Out with the devil-spawn. At the ice-rink, I believe. ‘Tis the season, after all.”

“That’s your son, John,” Paul responds, mechanically, having said the words so many times, presumably thinking that one day they’ll have an effect on Awful John and his Awful Parenting.

“That he is. Besides, I said devil- _spawn._ Equivalent of your mum calling you a whoreson, isn’t it? Mulled wine?”

Paul cries out and lets his face drop into his hands. “Fucking Hell, John. I was so _sure_ it was going to work. I was just trying to free us up a bit.”

John doesn’t know what to say to that without causing offence, so he stands up. He leaves Paul in the sitting room to head for the mulled wine, home-brewed and stored by Cyn in one of the higher kitchen cupboards. It has served a strangely anonymous function this Christmas. Other than their actual Christmas dinner, Cyn and John have rarely shared meals at the table. Rather lubricating social gatherings or bringing the family or whatever mulled wine’s supposed to do, the thick-glass bottle has served more as a curiosity of the kitchen, to be contemplated and picked at over the days, bit by bit, by John and Cyn, and who knows, perhaps even the boy. Always by themselves, never with a view to good cheer, but a less boring way to ingest liquor. “For what it’s worth,” John says, on returning with two mugs, “I think we – you – really did give it your all. We’re not filmmakers, yet we made something, didn’t we? And sod the critics; we had fun.” If he says it enough to himself he’ll believe it, but Paul only needs a quick reminder. He cracks a smile.

“Thanks. Great mulled wine.” The conversation stills. They are sitting together on the sofa, Paul upright, and John leaning against the arm-rest with his legs bunched up, his toes touching Paul’s side. It feels like a long time since they’ve been at such undignified close quarters, and that they are sitting in silence only adds fuel to this notion. Still, as Paul sips slowly, his eyelids fluttering and as he licks his lips, John decides he is happy to have him in his company. The physical fondness has no intrinsic cause – it simply _is._ Then Paul opens the talk again, asking John if he has anything for “the film”.

John blinks at him. “We just _did_ the film.”

“No, not that one _,_ the cartoon.”

“Oh, _that._ ” Lord almighty, how many more of these? “What about one of George’s? There must be at least ten on the backburner.”

“I’m fearing we’ll have to use one of those at this rate,” Paul says. “I’ve just got this one nursery rhyme, been fooling around with it at home. But there ought to be something from you there as well.”

It’s not as if he and Paul haven’t privately sneered at George’s effort in the past. But something in Paul’s tone here rubs John _very_ much up the wrong way. He recalls George scowling his way through ‘Hello, Goodbye’, through most of the film shoot, and what he said when John came over to tell him Paul had decided to cut his section down again. _Surprised_ you’re _putting up with him, of all people._ “Yeah, I’ll get on that,” John says, like it’s a job assignment Paul wants in by Thursday, and that comparison takes his Paul-and-wine-induced good mood down to a temperature to rival the winter chill whistling outside.

A job assignment. From Paul, his partner, his equal _. His._ But when has it been otherwise, really? And when has that been a problem? Paul is still _his._

The phantom reappears after Paul disappears, the half-drunk mulled wine cooling on the coffee table where he left. “You’re that daft?” John says to John. “It’s _always_ been a problem. You’ve just stopped giving a shit.” He gives himself a kick to the back, sending him careening down to his bed, where he flips over and stares up at the ceiling, waiting for his mind to evaporate. “You sad wanker. You waste of air. You tragic excuse for a husband. You…” Rather like the moment of falling asleep, John does not recall the exact moment when the drug fazes out his voice, but after some time, he is surrounded by blissful, musical silence once more.

7.

He’s holding on until India. When it’s far away enough to gleam enticingly, the lack of drugs and English comfort seems to John completely irrelevant: India will be his medicine, and he will take it gladly. When he is not staring down the barrel of that gun, when it lies all the way over in 1968, he loves the idea. John is imagining cleansing sun and cool water and soft clothes and heavy flower scents after their final day in the studio is over, and it is nearly morning. He is, for the first time in some time, in a great mood, even as the bite of February weather catches him on his exit.

He smiles at Geoff. He remembers to thank Mal for something or other, and does not miss the stutter of surprise this causes. “I’m sure you’ll think of something for this,” he says cheerily to George Martin, who is studying the recorded material of ‘Lady Madonna’, contemplating overdubs. “You really knocked it out the park with ‘Walrus.’” George, too, looks surprised at the compliment, and his wiry face breaks into a smile.

John, riding the wave of his magnanimity, searches for Paul. He finds him outside the studio, perched on the stone steps with a ciggy. “Hey,” he calls to his friend, and his voice sounds fuller today, feeding on itself to regain its strength. “Great bark you’ve got there.”

Paul reacts immediately, turning to John and grinning. Paul loves it when things go well in the studio, particularly these days, when the occurrence is not quite as commonplace as it once was. They always come in with good intentions, but too often the lethargy sets in early and they descend into a stream of aimless experimentation and sloppy takes. _Noodling around,_ Ringo calls it. Today John woke up with a determination not to noodle, and toned down the substance intake a notch. Within ten minutes he had scribbled down the lyrics to ‘Hey Bulldog’; the rest just fell into place. “Why, thank you.”

Paul takes a drag on his cigarette, his face half in shadow. Heart overflowing, John wills him to turn around and look at him again. He likes to look upon Paul’s face. That physical fondness is still there, has never gone, and now with the energy of ‘Hey Bulldog’ still activating his blood-flow, it feels more potent than ever. It feels like a little more than fondness, actually, though John knows that now is probably not the time.

There it is, the aspect of Brian’s death that John has not even thought to examine through all the confusion and grief: whatever else Brian might have been, he was above all a symbol. A symbol of authority that John strained against while leaning into and now, with him gone, they’re free.

He adores Paul. Paul must adore him. He’s always known that, of course; they’ve even let each other know a few times. They’ve fallen into the habit of not talking about it anymore, though, just accepting it as fact as solid as each other’s presence in a room. John reaches over to place an arm around Paul’s middle, aching for closeness. Paul sighs and leans his head into John’s neck, and the soft bristles of his hair seem to light up all the nerve endings under his chin. He is more than mesmerised, he’s magnetised by Paul, a paperclip struck like a match against a lodestone.

He’s thinking, suddenly, of kissing Paul. The scene in his head develops from there, while they sit static and silent in the night, until eventually they lope home bleary-eyed. Paul only lives a few doors away, so John walks him to his house, like a date. “Jane asleep in there?” he asks, and wishes he didn’t.

“Yeah,” Paul smiles, dopily, and says, as if John is in his dream, “I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna propose to her.”

India cannot come soon enough, and yet, for some strange reason, John is sick at the thought of it.

8.

One day in India, a few days after their arrival, the Maharishi lets them do what they wish. No sessions, no lectures – they are advised, he says, to use this stretch of time to meditate, and to really feel every inch of the day, undistorted by distractions and time-passing activities. Though he would hardly attempt to stop them, he recommends not playing games with the others, or leaving the retreat. “What about music?” Paul asks, immediately. The Maharishi considers his response, before saying,

“Music can be an act of the soul, or an act of the mind. Today, try to keep it as an act of the soul. Do not bulge your veins trying to create: simply let it be.”

Paul, to whom music comes as naturally as breathing, understands completely and lifts himself up from the petal-strewn ground to head to his cabin. John, however, is finally experiencing creative drive for the first time in months, because writing and playing music, _concentrating_ on it, making it an _act of the mind,_ are what’s keeping him sane here. Still, he heeds the Maharishi’s counsel and closes himself in his room.

The sunlight comes heavy, saturated in colour, through the windows. John drapes a scarf over them, dimming the light to a warm purple flush.

He has now gone more than four days with no acid, no pot, no speed, not even a drink. He’s surprised to have lasted this long, and he is certain the Maharishi had something to do with it. Now he is on his own, but this should be fine. He slept hours away in Weybridge with no issue, not even needing substances usually, though they were always available.

He lies on his back, throws his arm over his eyes and waits to fall into blackness.

An hour later, he is on his side, clawing at the woollen sheets of his bed, eyes wide open and very much not asleep. His body aches; his mind aches. He wants to do something, and Maharishi told them to feel every inch of the day, to relish them, but suddenly the day is so long, and the silence is growing unbearable.  

Was this how he whiled away his time in Weybridge? Silently, letting the quiet take over each and every room, infecting his belongings, his wife, himself? When he could have been writing, like his fingers itch to do now, when he could have been going to art galleries with Paul, when he could have been explaining to Brian that he cared about him? The wallpaper was peeling in his mansion, straining under the weight of his inaction, yet he let himself be buried in it.

“No,” John says, surprised at the raggedness of his voice, how similar it is to the ghost he heard on the Magical Mystery Tour, “I didn’t bury _meself._ I let someone bury _me._ ”

Somewhere, out in the jungle, there is a loud agonised noise.

He sits up in his bed, breathing heavily. His ears strain for a human noise. The cicadas are singing, throbbing the air into something solid that beats like a heart, and the birds whistle and screech like the tropical equivalent of a bustling city. But it is so quiet, as not a human murmur can be heard. His head feels, though, like it’s been sitting in an oven, or lying right by a busy road; there are sharp stings zinging through it, electrical pulses, and they are keeping him awake, as well as conjuring unpleasant things, the kinds of daydreams acid has been giving him, when he is fool enough to take it in a bad mood.

He attempts to calm himself down and meditate by himself. Things only get worse from there, as John realises these unpleasant things are no daydreams brought on by fever dreams. No, they look an awful lot like the truth. Someone buried him. He’s digging his way out.

*

When Paul does not appear at the door within ten seconds of his first knock, John is ready to tear the whole house-front down, but then Paul does appear, lightly dressed. He looks put out; he was meditating most likely. “What is it, John?”

“Can we chat?”

“Now? I was in the middle of meditating…”

“You’ve got all the time in the world for that. I need to talk to you now.”

“Okay. Alright. Fine.” He’s inconvenienced by John’s presence. What else is new? He’s positively seething to have to spare a few precious minutes of his time for this, whatever this is. Why didn’t John see it sooner? Paul is done with him. John wants to rip him a new one with words, like he used to. He wants to scream and scream at him like his young child self for taking ownership of the band, for using Brian’s death as a way of getting power, for using _John’s_ incapacitated state to get ahead. For forcing them all through a pointless few months for a shit album whose best songs are nearly a year old.  Perhaps most of all for not giving John his undivided attention, a real long chunk of it, since they arrived in Rishikesh.

What comes out of his mouth instead is, “Did I kill Brian?”

Though the words shock John, and he’s about to regret them, he stops short at the sight of Paul’s face. He looks briefly horrified, no walls covering it up, and John’s so euphoric at having provoked this that he lets his mouth go where it wants. “Did I kill another friend?”

“What do you mean?” Paul whispers.

“Stu. Brian. I killed him too, didn’t I? I didn’t love him enough.”

“You don’t – you didn’t kill Stu, John, what on earth are you talking about? Have you…. Did you sneak some acid on the plane? Are you insane?”

“No. No.” He’s not denying the acid, though that too is not true. John’s physically sober, definitely, but he’s not sure that’s making much of a positive difference. Nor is he denying the insanity. “I hit his head, Paul. I kicked him in the head for dancing with Cyn. They said he… that some sort of trauma might… That’s not the _point,_ the point is about _Brian…_ ”

“John,” Paul murmurs, and he sounds like he used to before the cyclone swallowed them up, he sounds low and sweet and on John’s wavelength – but he’s _lowering_ himself down there, John realises, a poker of rage heating up in his brain, he thinks he has to _lower himself down to John’s level._ “Come in, mate.” He brings a hand up to John’s nape, a steadying motion designed to mollify, to placate, to… to subdue. “It wasn’t your fault, John. Just come in and tell me what this is all about.”

John complies, but only briefly. Once inside, seated on the overflowing, too-receptive cushions, he lets Paul have it, or at least he thinks he does. His mouth utters a babbling stream of accusations, telling Paul he took too much control, that he blew that control, that he has no emotions, that he’s abandoning John, that he buried John.

Paul looks deeply upset by all of this, but not guilty exactly. He’s got this awful look of pity that John’s not used to seeing cast on him, and when he cries out _you buried me!_ Paul snaps into action and leaps to his feet, pulling John up by his wrists as he does so. The speed of the motion does not agree with the aches and nausea rippling all over his body, but it stops his litany short.

Paul’s looking right at him, like he’s the centre of his universe. The last time John felt himself under this microscope was the time they dropped acid together. His breath catches in his throat. “Paul.” The blind anger subsides, and John, still sober, starts to feel foolish. This is just Paul. His Paul, nothing more. He waits for his Paul to pluck him out of the netherworld.

 

“You need to calm down,” Paul says. His voice is firm, low, yet John hears the tremble. “Have a lie-down.”

Paul’s netherworld-plucking leaves much to be desired. “I can’t _sleep,_ Paul,” John snarls, the anger rising up again with a vengeance, this time clearer-headed and coherent. “What do you think I’ve been trying to _do_ these past hours? I’m dead on my feet but I can’t stop my fucking brain.”

A twitch of a smile tugs at Paul’s mouth. “It used to be all you’d ever do,” he muses, the sound barely making a dent in the air. “Sleeping.” The gentle, affectionate tease only fires John up even more.

“And I bet that suited you just nicely, didn’t it?”

Paul’s face falls completely; a guarded look enters his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

John shakes himself out of Paul’s grip, no longer eager for his salvation. “Easier for you to get all the A-Sides when I’m horizontal. Who the hell do you think you are?” He jabs a finger in Paul’s chest, and Paul reels backwards in surprise. He _does_ have power. He’s just been forgetting to use it. “I _made_ you what you are today, have you forgotten that?”

Paul seems to want to contradict him with a shout, and John is more than ready for that, but instead he just shakes his head, clutching his temples between thumb and fingers. “I can’t deal with you when you’re like this.” The words are dismissive, yet Paul’s voice is shaky, and John thinks he hears tears in it. “I just can’t… You have to go.”

The words fire off a chain reaction in John’s head too quick and confusing to follow. An explosion seems to take place within, and he doesn’t know what his arms are going to do until he’s grabbed Paul’s head hard by the back, tugged it towards his, and begun kissing him. Paul scrambles; his reflexes are too slow for his head to do anything but obey John’s hands, but his arms flail round and catch John by the shoulders. In the clearing smoke after the explosion, John’s certain, now, that this is what he wants to do. He tightens his hold on Paul, and is nearly overwhelmed by the physical relief provided by this closeness, this mutual passion that is so right. That can _make_ everything right.

Paul is even kissing him back, his surprised mouth relaxing into the contact. Only his hands on John’s shoulders are firm, and after some seconds they push away. Their faces are disconnected now, but still inches apart. John stares and stares, thinks he’ll never have his fill, as long as Paul doesn’t go away from him again.

“What the hell are you doing?” Paul says.

“What I want. Finally.” John makes to pull Paul in for another kiss, and never let him go this time, but Paul stops him short, grabbing his wrist.

“Not when you’re off your head, Johnny…” He looks away. Of all things, he’s embarrassed. The situation has left his control. The cicada throb seems to encompass everything around them now, extending to John’s head, pulsing in and out, in and out. Paul’s tying him up in a knot, on purpose.

“I’m not _drunk,_ you arsehole!” Paul winces; good, he meant that to be loud.

“That doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing!” The flash of pity John catches as Paul turns his eyes to his once more freezes him up for a moment. The phantom reappears, invisible, audible between the cicada pulses, Paul’s voice rather than his own.  “You’re crackers. Off the rails.” John shakes his head, tries to rid himself of that mocking, contemptuous voice. “Off to the loony bin with you…” Paul seems to say, quietly in his ear, as Paul stands in front of him, face white, eyes wide, hand still caught round his wrist starting to sweat.

With a burst of energy John twists Paul’s hands round, until they release John and fall by his side. He reverses their positions; pushes Paul back onto the sofa, bends down over him, and cannot resist relishing the… well, the ownership he seems to be experiencing. “I know what I want,” he says slowly, clearly and with confidence. And then with less confidence as he sinks down into the couch with Paul’s slender frame beneath him, and their eyes locked on each other: “Damn it, Paul, give me this at least.”

Paul, framed by orange and red patchwork sofa coverings, schools his face. Something intangible comes down over the eyes, like a window shutter, and all that emotion appears to fade out of him. John’s seen this face countless times, but never directed at him. “No. I’m sorry, John, I’m sorry… No.”

That little word. So piteous it seems to shatter all his bulk and end his being.

“ _Well, fuck you,”_ John manages to cry out hoarsely, until his tiredness takes over; the rage leaves him and his eyes well up. His body seems to panic and seize up in response, but it is too late and the tears start coming large and heavy down his face, and he lets out a shuddering breath as the figure in front of him blurs. He knew it already, yet it twists torturously in his chest to know that Paul does not want him after everything.

Paul, stricken, pulls him close. John can hear him apologising still, for something, saying he didn’t mean it, but he cannot respond; he is crying too hard to do anything else. He has a vague sense that he is producing ugly sounds, jerking against Paul’s body with the force of his sobs, and a sense of Paul’s hands, wet with sweat, clinging to the back of his shirt. John’s limbs hang uselessly by his sides. He is grateful on some level for the softness of this touch, for the dampness appearing on his own shoulder from Paul’s tears. But in the end it means nothing, he’s still buried and Paul will not do anything to help him. He weeps, trying hard not to. He’ll be a man about this later.

9.

A few days later, Paul is gone. Jane is easier than John. A memory rises in John’s mind, unbidden, though he does not know if it comes from reality or a dream. He can see a scribbled line of handwriting, Brian’s; was it his diary? Perhaps he snuck a glimpse over their Barcelona trip? Or was it of John’s own making, all of it? Whichever it is, Brian’s words are burned indelibly into his brain.

_John Lennon is under the impression that he has the rights to ownership of any and all people. I fear he has ownership of me._

He lost the rights to Brian; he has lost the rights to Paul, if he ever had them. Dully he turns over a postcard, with just one word written on it: _Breathe._

He does so. It’s not too difficult.

It’s a good place, he decides, to start over.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been fascinated by the mental state of John in 1967, particularly after Brian's death, and what led him to denounce the Beatles and choose Yoko. This was my attempt at presenting that breakdown. A sidenote: Paul might come across as rather cold in this fic, but John's an unreliable narrator, and this is how he perceived him at this time, not my view. I don't blame Paul for John's mental troubles, but when one half of a relationship is happy and stable and the other half is depressed and unstable, things just aren't going to go well.   
> Hope you liked this, and please give me your thoughts!


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